At the last company I worked for (Internet Brands), there were about 100 developers. 90 PHP, 6 Java (for CarsDirect.com), and 4 .NET (for a handful of sites li

At the last company I worked for (Internet Brands), there were about 100 developers. 90 PHP, 6 Java (for CarsDirect.com), and 4 .NET (for a handful of sites like Tjoos.com that haven't been migrated). Some of the PHP devs also know a little Perl or Ruby (helpful for migrations or legacy code). IB's business model is to migrate newly-acquired sites to PHP/MySQL whenever possible. This keeps development cheap because PHP devs are cheaper than Java or .NET devs. The Java or .NET guys probably make 2x what PHP devs make there, but those positions are in very short supply. PHP is good to know if only for the sheer volume of jobs out there, even if the starting pay is lower. Keep in mind that highly able devs familiar with any language will make more money.